Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "The Sound of Music" has it all: nuns, mountains, cute kids, a wedding and even Nazis. But Pittsburgh Musical Theater's current version, concluding this weekend at the Byham Theater, might be called SoM Lite, so cheerily does it focus on the upbeat in the Cinderella story of Maria, Captain von Trapp and his seven children.
The initial threats to their destined union -- her religious commitment, his stern reserve, the social and age gulfs between them, the children's resistance and the marital machinations of Elsa Schraeder -- all count for next to nothing. Only the sudden Anschluss arrival of the Nazis allows tension-and-release at the musical's end, as the new family escapes over the mountains to Switzerland and eventually America.
1 comment:
What's really stunning about this Sound of Music revival, as Chris pointed out throughout his review, is that the production actually stumbled over revealing something new in the story - by cutting out the conflict and whitewashing the story with happy, Maria's relationship with the abbey gained a new interpretation (a respect for the Abbess instead of devotion to religion). If you take that into looking at how Maria interacts with Captain Von Trapp and the children, you get an entirely new Maria than you normally get through most productions. Worth exploring!
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